Jacinta Nampijinpa Price blasts ‘corporates’ for shaming Aussies who celebrate Australia Day after Woolworths stopped selling merchandise

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has criticized ‘companies’ for shaming Australians celebrating Australia Day as the fallout continues over Woolworth’s decision not to sell merchandise.

The annual debate over the national holiday took a heated turn last week when Woolworths dumped all Australia Day merchandise from its stores, prompting Liberal Leader Peter Dutton to call for a boycott of the chain.

Mr Dutton’s coalition colleague, Ms Nampijinpa Price, said this Sky News Sunday that the public resents big corporations dictating to them.

“Australians are more concerned about the cost of living, they don’t want to deal with companies telling them how to behave, how to think or feel about the country they love,” she said.

“I mean, this is home. They are tired of being ashamed of being proud Australians.”

Ms Nampijinpa Price was one of the most prominent Aboriginal opponents of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, which was gunned down during the October 14 referendum.

Fellow No campaigner Warren Mundine agreed with Ms Price’s sentiment, stating that ‘the reality is we have so much to celebrate about this country’.

“We are one of the incredible nations that have brought 26 million people from all over the world, multi-colored, multi-cultural and multi-religious,” he said.

‘We have all these great people in this country who have come here and I’m proud that they chose Australia, to really build this country into a great place…

“We are probably the most successful multi-everything country in the world.”

Mr Mundine had a different view on Australia Day, just four months ago.

In September he broke ranks with several No campaigners by calling for Australia Day to be moved to January 26 and for treaties to be signed with Indigenous Australians.

The former Labor political activist turned Liberal candidate also called for the recognition of Aboriginal land rights in an interview on ABC’s Insiders.

‘January 26 will always be an important day because European countries came to Australia and founded their colonies here.

‘We can’t ignore that. But we cannot become prisoners of it. We need to face the facts and move on.

‘Yes, recognize the history. Yes, acknowledge the invasion, acknowledge the good and the bad of our history, but we still have to move on,” Mr Mundine said at the time.

In the official No Case pamphlet sent to voters before the October 14 referendum, Coalition MPs warned that “many activists are campaigning to abolish Australia Day, our flag and other institutions and symbols important to Australians to change’.

Earlier this year it was announced that more than 80 local governments across the country had pulled the plug on January 26 citizenship ceremonies.

Mr Mundine told Daily Mail Australia that political leaders in councils across Australia were steering the country in the wrong direction.

“We’re building this damn good country, but all we get are these leaders – especially in the Green Councils – all they do is turn the country upside down,” he said.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price said people are “tired of being ashamed of being proud Australians”. The photo shows two women wearing bikinis with the Australian flag

“(They say) ‘we’re a bunch of racists’ or ‘we’re a nation of uneducated idiots,’ so I’m just over it,” he said.

Mr Mundine called this the act of ‘a bunch of whiners who don’t like Australians’.

“Let’s just chase all these whiners away, stop wasting all this money and start celebrating this country and fixing things.

“I just want to get back to the real issues because we’re spending too much time on this.”